The Journey

 

I went on a journey this morning.  Not a long journey; I barely left the city limits of Centerville.  But a journey nonetheless.

It started with a trip to the farmers market.  I had hopes of strawberries, hopes that were dashed when I arrived to find them sold out.  I bought cabbage, broccoli, and a freshly baked baguette, visited for a few minutes with a couple of vendors (remarking at length on the unexpected downpour we experienced last night), and went on my way.  As I started home, a longing hit me for a ham and biscuit from the market north of town.  It sometimes takes a lot to get me to cross the river, but the more I considered ham and biscuits, the urge overcame my reluctance. I turned up my radio, circled the square and set off.

I stopped for a newspaper on the way, bought a Dr. Pepper and eventually got my ham and biscuit.  As I left the drive-through, I decided to take the scenic route home.  With my window down and the radio playing my favorite outlaw country music, I set off down the winding back roads.  Someone was mowing his yard and the smell of fresh cut grass reminded me how glad I was that I got my front yard cut last night before the rain.  I also thought about the wide expanse of hayfield that had just been cut around my farm and hoped for sunshine today to quickly dry out the windrows.

I drove past the country club, where a group of kids was gathered out front, probably for instruction in the game of golf.  The greens stretched as far as I could see, dotted with early morning golfers enjoying the mild weather and sunshine.  I learned to play tennis at this country club, back in my junior high days when the club still featured a tennis court.

I made the turn onto Grinders Switch Road, a winding road through deep woods dotted with just a few houses and crossing the meandering railroad track several times.  This road used to be the only way from Centerville to pretty much anywhere east of town.  It led to Old Reynoldsburg Road and was the path a group of the Cherokee took on the Trail of Tears.  The sunlight through the trees cast dappled shadows on the road, and Queen Anne’s Lace bloomed at the edge of the woods. The breeze blew through my window while my music played in the background.  On impulse, I turned off onto a gravel road that led to an almost hidden waterfall, spilling noisily into a pool below. 

Ducks played at the edge of the road, and I envied the owners of this piece of paradise, surrounded by hilly woods.  From there I followed the banks of the Duck River, up a steep winding hill to Grinders Switch, one of the most famous of all fictional towns.

As I crossed the railroad tracks at Grinders Switch, a flock of turkeys caught my eye.  I stopped to watch, thinking to get a picture, but they meandered off the tracks into the woods before I could get out of the truck.  The tracks look sad and abandoned now, overgrown with weeds, and I think about the trains that used to run through these woods, taking passengers from Centerville to Dickson and on to Nashville. 

My great-great grandfather, Van Buren Shouse, took the train to Nashville for supplies he could not get in Centerville.  His journal lists what he bought on one such trip, material for dresses and shirts, a new saddle for one daughter, shoes for another and a #18 corset.  He did not specify who requested the corset.  My great grandfather Tom Colley shipped lumber along these tracks, and my great grandmother rode the train to the city for shopping, while her daughters attended the theaters downtown. 

Grinders Switch, originally called Griners Switch, after the Griner family who owned most of the land in that area, of course became Minnie Pearl’s fictional hometown.  I love the story about how that railroad stop came to be there.  When the railroad was being planned through the county, officials of the railroad visited Mrs. Griner to ask about getting a right of way through the property.  She listened to their pitch and said, “I’ll have to talk to my husband.”  When she left the room, the men must have been puzzled, because Mr. Griner had been dead for several years.  She returned, having communed in some way with him, and said that they would agree to the right of way with the stipulation that they would place a stop there to enable her to catch the train any time she wanted to.  So Grinders Switch came to be, with the misspelled name becoming the better known name.  One of the old signs with the original spelling, I believe, still sits along the railroad bed.

Once I was past Grinders Switch, I was practically home.  They were raking the hay as I passed the hayfield, using a hay tedder to fluff up the rows so the hay will dry.  Soon the smell of freshly baled hay will fill the air and monster sized bales will dot the landscape.  The sight of a field full of hay is music to a farmer’s eyes, only surpassed by the sight and smell of a barn filled with hay before a long winter.

I sat in the porch swing with my ham and biscuit and the weekly paper.  The dogs sat hopefully at my feet, convinced that I would share at least a crumb of biscuit.  The hummingbird was busy at the feeder and the woodpecker picked at a few peanuts left in the almost empty feeder.  I noticed with relief that the rose bush we cut down, believing it to be a lost cause, now has tiny branches with tiny pink blooms already appearing.  And just like that, the morning was almost gone, not one lick of work has been done, and it’s almost time for lunch.

 

When Time Stands Still

 

The ancient Greeks had it right.  Their language was much more precise than our language.  They had three words for love.  Because they knew that love is too big for just one word. And they had two words for time.  Chronos and Kairos.

Chronos is, of course, chronological time, measured by the inevitable movement of the clock.  In my younger days, it was measured by the sweep of the hands, relentlessly moving around the clock face and ticking off the numbers that measure our lives.  Sometimes the hands seem to move too fast, as when you have a deadline.  Sometimes the hands creep by.  I’ve spent an eternity during the long hours in a hospital chair, waiting for the end of an endless night.  Or waiting in a sort of limbo, wishing for news but dreading what you might hear.  The other kind of time, Kairos, is an entirely different matter. 

My first introduction to the concept of Kairos as a child was my reading of A Wrinkle in Time.  I didn’t understand exactly what the author meant about her concept of time, not intellectually at least.  But, like most children, I had an instinctive understanding of what she was trying to say, not as science but as a place in my soul.  I knew what it was to ride my horse for hours at a time, not conscious of the passage of time, but truly present in doing what I loved to do.  I immersed myself in books, entering another world and becoming a part of that world, only emerging when the last page was turned. 

Watch a child at play, really lost in the moment, and you will see what Kairos looks like.  Watch a musician play his instrument, eyes closed and the notes pouring out of his heart, or an artist, when his brush tells a story and time stands still.  At its best, writing happens in Kairos, when words spill out of your fingers faster than you can type and an hour seems like moments. In Kairos we become what God calls us to be, almost touching creation, catching a glimpse of the veil between here and heaven.

I have experienced Kairos sitting by a campfire under the summer stars, beside a rocky stream.  Tales of the fish we would catch, or those who got away, remembrances of camping trips past and listening in silence to frogs croaking and the splash of fish surfacing for a midnight snack.  Or taking an unknown path to a mysterious location, wondering all the time what lies just around the next bend.

Then there are unhurried meals with family and friends, sitting around a crowded table, when the clock has no meaning, and a lunch hour sometimes stretches into two.  Sometimes Kairos happens when you meet new friends, friends you recognize as kindred spirits, when idle conversation turns into hours of catching up on lives spent just waiting to meet in person.

I find myself noticing this concept of time more and more these days.  I sit on a mossy rock in my garden of wildflowers and time passes without notice.  I attend a three hour concert so special that I’m not sure I even took a breath until the end, when I wished we could start over at the beginning and do it again.  I remember a tribute show for John Prine, when 3,000 fans breathed together and sang along with hearts full of gratitude for the songs he left us.   I sat next to a man I had never seen in my life, but felt I knew.  “Are you crying?” he asked me a couple of times, when the lyrics were more than I could bear.  “Yes,” I said, and he just nodded.  Chronological time meant nothing that night, and strangers became friends.

 I experience Kairos on my front porch, swinging gently in the morning sun or in the lazy afternoon, when work becomes unimportant and even the birds fall silent. 

Maybe my favorite time on the porch is in the evening, watching dusk turn to dark, witnessing the moon peer over the trees and the stars wink out of the clouds.  The Milky Way spills across the night sky and the North Star holds its steady position, ready to show travelers the way home. The fireflies, like stars raining out of the skies, the voice of the owls and the quiet snorts from the horses in the field wipe away the cares of the day.  There is no Chronos time there. 

Several generations have enjoyed this porch – I wonder if they felt the same timelessness as I feel.  I think my mama did, even if she didn't express it in that way. 

And I know the kids she babysat did, because they still share memories with me about the times they spent on that porch.  And now their own children are coming to visit and sit on this porch.

 

Alice’s sister and her family, my cousins from across the country, came for a visit, and we spent an entire afternoon on the front porch, trading memories and talking idly about everything from movies to dogs to biscuits with butter and sugar to the dangers of artificial intelligence to how we are all related.  We watched the birds at the feeder, marveling at the size of the resident woodpecker, and wondering where the hummingbirds are today. We discussed the taste of wood sorrel, the price of eggs and the hazards of gathering eggs as children.  We talked about when to plant corn, what kind of tomatoes are best and how to make cracklings at hog killing time.  We petted the dogs, who understand that time is not important at all, unless it’s time for dinner.  I marveled at the behavior of my dogs toward my cousin’s husband, who is in frail health.  Sophie and Scout stationed themselves on either side of him, watching with quiet eyes and encouraging him with gentle nudges to stroke their heads and rub their ears.  We talked about my sign, which advertises Porch Therapy.  “I don’t do anything,” I told them.  “You just sit here and work out your own problems.”

My young cousin (not all that young now, to my amazement, but younger than me) played with dogs, disappeared occasionally to help Clay work on the lawnmower in the back yard, and helped me feed the horses.  Every now and then someone would mention that it was probably time to go, but no one made a move toward the car.  Before we knew it, it was 6:00 and Alice’s husband had called to see where they were.  “We’re sitting on the porch,” she told him.  And that’s all that needed to be said. We were in an enchanted place, experiencing Kairos.  It was a wonderful afternoon.

 

 

 

 

 

Squash Warning

 

I hope my friends like squash.  Because it seems I have accidentally planted too much of it.  On my yearly pilgrimage to Martin’s Greenhouse, I purchased two yellow squash and two zucchini seedlings.  No more, no less.  I am one person, living alone, who eats lunch out almost every day – I’m not sure why I think I need to plant anything, but I do.  So, I had my four plants, ready to go in the ground as soon as it warmed up a little. 

I did not know that mice and rats like squash plants.  I knew I had mice and even worse, rats that had chewed holes and found their way into my house.  I was working on getting rid of them, a saga deserving of a full-length novel that will go unwritten because it brings too many unpleasant memories and might lead to nightmares.  Anyway, I did not know that mice and rats would eat squash plants.  We never had rats in the house before this year.  I think they had heard about my mama, who would take a garden hoe after any varmint that threatened plants or animals she owned.  Word had gone around that the new occupant of this house was a softer touch and not as good with a hoe.  Anyway, imagine my surprise when I was watering all my baby plants in the laundry room and the little containers of squash were empty.  I looked at the dogs, who looked back at me innocently.  Surely Scout didn’t eat my squash plants.  He would probably have just emptied the whole thing in the floor and played with the containers.  It had to be those blasted rats.  On further examination, I saw that the stems, right down at dirt level, had been chewed off.  It seems another trip to the greenhouse would be necessary.

I was at the co-op the next day and the seed display caught my eye.  Squash seed!  So, maybe I could just plant some seeds in the same little containers and set them out in the garden.  It would certainly be cheaper than making a trip for more plants.  I planted two seeds in each of the compartments, set them in my kitchen window and settled back to wait.  After a week, there was no sign of life in my window.  The other local feed store had received a shipment of plants, so I stopped by there to see what was up.  Squash plants!  Really nice looking, large healthy squash plants.  The only problem was, they came in a pack of four and I didn’t really need four.  I mean, just do the math.  Four plants producing two or three squash a day would mean a dozen squash.  Oh well, I thought, I can give some of it away.  Then, the next day, at the farmer’s market, I found some single zucchini plants.  One zucchini seemed prudent.  About all I use it for is zucchini bread.  I was all set.  I now had four hills of squash and one hill of zucchini.

The next morning I went to the sink to wash last night’s dishes and lo and behold, eight tiny squash seedlings were peeking out of the dirt at the morning sun. They must have liked what they saw because by the next morning they were about three inches tall.

I suppose I could just throw them out, but I can hear my mama at my elbow talking about wasting food and starving children who would be happy to get even a single helping of squash.  So, in a few days, I will get the hoe and make homes for these tardy seedlings at the end of one of the rows.  Twelve plants – if they produce only two squash a day (Hah!), that will be twenty-four every day to find homes for.  I’m going to need a bigger garden basket.  And possibly more friends.  In about six weeks, everybody in town better lock your car doors when you park.